Thursday, November 13, 2008

My new friend Amy sent me collard greens last week. The gift was much appreciated and they were gorgeous, but there was only one problem—I couldn’t eat them because they were on Facebook.

Are you on Facebook? I just signed up about three weeks ago, and I’ve already reconnected with so many friends—both old and new. I’ve even discovered that worlds can collide as, say, I discover that a work friend is friends with a high school friend, unbeknownst to any of us that we all know each other.

Twitter is another application that has been occupying my time lately. It’s a microblogging site where you only have 140 characters to say your piece. There are many uses for Twitter, but I use it to chat with people and post the occasional query or inane thought. It’s kind of silly and sometimes feels a bit narcissistic—but it’s also a quick and easy way to connect with people, which for me is the great appeal of the Internet.

All this virtual living is fun, especially when you’re tethered to your computer for eight hours a day. But a girl still has to eat.

And that brings me back to collard greens.
I love my collard greens soft and smooth, lightly dressed in a broth rich with smoked meat—be it ham, bacon or turkey (or all three if you’re feeling especially carniverous). There’s no instant gratification with collard greens as you’re looking at cooking them for at least an hour and a half to get them as soft as I like them. How soft? Well, as my grandma said when I made greens this summer at her farm, “Goodness, you’ve cooked those to the point of no nutrition!”

To which I reply, that’s why God invented pot liquor, which is the delicious cooking liquid. It’s super healthy as all the vitamins that are no longer in the vegetables will have leached into it. So drink up and you’ll be just fine. Though, truth be told, collard greens are remarkably hardy and actually retain much of their nutritional value even after cooking for hours on end.

Giving a recipe for collard greens is sort of like giving a recipe for nachos—so intuitive and easy that there’s not much to say. For collards, you just throw the meat, onion, garlic, peppers and vinegar into a pot of boiling water. Let that cook for half an hour or so and then add your greens. Cover the pot and cook for another hour and a half or until they’re the texture you prefer. Simple.

But what if you don’t want meat in your collard greens? That makes it a bit more complicated if you want them to taste good. Collard greens are very bitter and the smoked meat adds balance to the pot. The richness of the meat also gives a rounder texture to both the greens and the broth. So you want to find vegetarian ingredients that counteract the bitterness and give a fuller mouthful.

Chipotles in adobo will provide the smoke, while garlic, onion tomatoes and carrots will provide the flavor. For acidity to balance the bitterness, a splash of vinegar is a must. And for that full, meaty feeling in the mouth? I like to use peanut butter.

Now don't shake your head—peanut butter and greens go magnificently together. Plus, Africans have long combined peanuts with their greens, so it’s a classic flavor combination. And while the peanut butter doesn’t make the greens overly nutty, it does add a richness to both the greens and the broth that can be missing in greens not made with meat. So while I love my greens both ways, sometimes you don’t want meat and need a suitable substitution.This is it.

And after I finish eating my greens at lunch today, you'll again find me in front of the computer. If you want to say howdy, you will find me under Lisa Fain on Facebook and homesicktexan on Twitter.

Instructions:
Thoroughly clean each collard leaf and remove the ribs and stems. Tear each leaf in half.

In a large pot or Dutch oven, sauté on medium heat the onions and carrots in the olive oil, until lightly brown, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for 1 more minute. Add the tomatoes and chipotles. Add torn leaves to the pot and add four cups of water. Bring water to a boil, and then turn heat down to a simmer. Add the vinegar and stir in the peanut butter.

Cook greens for an hour and a half, or until they are the texture you prefer. Serve with pepper vinegar or hot pepper sauce such as Tabasco.

Yield:6 to 8 servings

Notes: What? You say you want meat? Well, take the above recipe, swap 1/2 pound of smoked ham or bacon or turkey for the tomatoes, carrot, chipotles and peanut butter. Add them to the pot after you cook the onion and garlic. Add six cups of water, bring to a boil and cook for half an hour. Add the greens and vinegar, and cook for another hour and a half. You might want to add a teaspoon of cayenne as well. If you have any leftover ham or smoked turkey after Thanksgiving, collard greens are an excellent vehicle for their smoked goodness. Of course, collard greens are also appropriate the day of the big meal, too.

I've been eating so many greens lately it's crazy. They're overflowing from CSA pick up each week. I'm on to the chipotle in greens idea, but peanut butter is new to me. I'll have to try that with one of my many upcoming meals of greens.

i love to cook my greens in apple cider (deluted with some water) with lots and lots of onions. sometimes with apple smoked bacon, but a lot of the times with out. i think they are quite yummy that way. and as for the liquid, well that is what the cornbread is for. can't eat a bowl of greens with out it.

This recipe looks wonderful! We eat a lot of greens at our house and tend to rely a little too heavily on bacon and cream to flavor them. This will provide a nice alternative - thanks!

(We quit doing our CSA membership because for about 3 solid months we received tons of BEETS in our pickup box. I like them, my husband hates them, and they were just too much. Farmers market is preferable to me.)

Watch out - Facebook is totally addicting! After years in the south and two very country grandmas, would you believe that I've never had collards. They were always served up at the table, but something about them just never appealed to me. Maybe I will take a leap of faith and have grandma make some while I'm home for turkey day.

y'know, its weird, that's exactly how we make collard greens at work except for the peanut butter. My whole life I never liked them, still bitter even with the ham, until I tried the carrot and chipotle spiked ones. It was like a greens epiphany. Now I love them. Strange it took nyc to make me love them, though people do look at me like i'm crazy when i want "the broth" too.

I've mostly used collard greens in soup, but I'd have to say they're definitely my favorite type of greens. (And I like pretty much every type of greens, so that's saying something!) Love the sound of this. The peanut butter is a real stroke of cooking genius!

I love collards, but mustard greens are my favorite. I know, too bitter for some, but nothing beats mustard greens with ham hocks served with cornbread (the "not sweet" kind, thank you very much.) Now that's a meal! Thanks for the veggie recipe, I will use try it.

Class Factotum--Yes, they are! Though I'm hard pressed to find any vegetable not made better with bacon grease!

Julie--Now's the time as greens are one of the few things that grow in the winter.

Farmer Jen--You're welcome!

NataleeRae--Tell me about it--I'm already spending way too much time on it!

Jesse--I have to admit, I prefer them with meat but if you don't have any meat this is an awesome substitution.

Lisa--Ha! Thanks!

April--That's why I prefer the farmer's market as well--I like to have some say in what I'm eating.

Culinarywannabe--You should definitely have your grandma's collard greens--I bet they're are the best!

Kassi--I know friends think I'm strange, too, for drinking the broth. But I have to say that it definitely keeps your from getting sick.

Laura--Enjoy!

Kalyn--Thank you--I felt very inspired when I added it to the pot and was pleasantly surprised that my hunch worked out.

Just a Plane Ride Away--My mom used to only let me watch two hours of TV when I was a kid, and I think I need follow suit and impose on myself some sort of restriction on my social-media time. It's so addicting!

Dianiewill--Nope, never the sweet kind of cornbread! And mustard greens are wonderful as well.

I think collard greens and brussel sprouts share some the same bitter compounds and cooking them in a specific manner will reduce the bitterness.Maybe boiling the daylights outta them is one way. I know some people that say you need to chop and slice these greens and sprouts a certain way to release the compounds.

Any coincidence that most popular recipes for both CG's & BS's all call for some type of pork product to enhance flavor ?

i also love greens, but my favorite is swiss chard and spinach. not together but seperately fixed. i have always put some kind of smoked meat and salt pork in my swiss chard. collards are just on the bitter side for me to. grams also put a dash of sugar in the pot.

I have never made collard greens at home, because I tend not to buy the sorts of meats that go in them. I don't remember the last time I bought bacon or (non-deli) ham. So I just have them if I go to a BBQ place.

I loved Facebook when I first joined last summer, back when it was all about networking. Then they came out with all the silly applications and I resented it for a while, nearly going right off it, throwing sheep, pah! Since the redesigned platform I can easily ignore them and am back to communicating with friends!

At university they used to serve collard greens - in Texas of course! Our heads filled with book-larnin' we never bothered to differentiate and would always call boiled leaves "spinach" and they'd correct us, "it's greens".

This looks delicious. And I have to say I kind of am enjoying fb; have reconnected with some old friends and it's fun to see what everyone is up to these days. Plus, you know, it's an entertaining time-waster.

How timely. We were just discussing our Thanksgiving menu and I suggested I make greens. My wife, knowing that my motivation for cooking greens is the chance to include a hunk of some special pork product, reminded me that one of our friends, whom we will be visiting in Seattle, is a vegetarian. That damped my enthusiasm somewhat. But the peanut butter idea sounds intriguing and just might be the solution.I did make what I call my baby-friendly greens last week -- organic chicken broth and some onion, leaving out smoked or cured pork (and garlic) still at this point. They were still delicious enough for baby, mom and dad to enjoy. Part of the key must have been the amazing greens from the Sunset Valley (Austin) farmers market.

we have a ton of collards coming out of the garden. i made your recipe to see if the fam would love it as mech as they love my regular "vegetarian" version. these greens rock :) The "fuller" texture makes such a difference. I'm making them again for Thanksgiving with sweet potato dumplings on top.

last week i tossed some collards in olive oil and baked them with some cubed squash and garlic that i was going to toss into a pasta dish- it was a happy experiment- they take on a crispy texture and might start to look a little burnt- i fished the greens out halfway through thinking i'd burnt them, in fact, but once i took a taste i realized that the burned looking ones tasted amazing- crispy and soft at the same time, and not bitter. i put the rest back and let them finish cooking with the rest of the veggies. YUM!